u had better close it up at the top, this
time. It will go better with your clothes."

Meinik grinned.

"I shall look quite like a person of importance. I shall be taken
for, at least, the headman of a large village."

He took the two rupees and walked off towards the town, while
Stanley went in to luncheon. There were a good many remarks as to
his altered appearance.

"Do you know, Brooke," one of the young lieutenants said, "I did
not feel at all sure that Cooke was not humbugging us, when he
introduced you to us, and that you were not really a Burman who had
travelled, and had somehow learned to speak English extraordinarily
well."

"Clothes and soap and water make a wonderful difference," Stanley
laughed, "but I shall be a good many shades lighter, when the rest
of the dye wears off. At any rate, I can go about, now, without
anyone staring at me."

After tiffin, Stanley had to tell his story again, at a very much
greater length than before.

"You certainly have gone through some queer adventures," the major
said, when he had finished his relation; "and there is no doubt
that you have had wonderful luck. In the first place, if that
bullet had gone half an inch lower, you would not have been one of
the four white survivors of that ugly business at Ramoo; then you
were lucky that they did not chop off your head, either when they
first took you, or when they got you to Ava. Then again, it was
lucky that Bandoola sent a special message that he wanted you kept
as an interpreter for himself, and that the official in charge of
you turned out a decent fellow, and aided you to make your escape.

"As to your obtaining the services of the man you brought down with
you, I do not regard that as a question of luck. You saved the
man's life, by an act of the greatest bravery--one that not one man
in ten would perform, or try to perform, for the life of a total
stranger. I hope that I should have made the effort, had I been in
your place; but I say frankly that I am by no means sure that I
should have done so.

"The betting was a good twenty to one against its being done
successfully. If the brute had heard your footstep, it would have
been certain death and, even when you reached him, the chances were
strongly against your being able to strike a blow at the animal
that would, for a moment, disable him; and so give you time to
snatch up one of the guns--which might not, after all, have been
loaded.

"It was a wonderf